Category Archives: Nuclear

Thorium and Methanol

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As we track down the back side of the petroleum curve, we will see a transition from the alkane/alcohol fueled Otto engine to a greater reliance on electric conveyance. Here is some wishful thinking-  Ethanol as a direct petroleum replacement will collapse under the weight of scrutiny as better cost data becomes available. Eventually, ethanol will be prized foremost as an oxygenate additive replacement for MTBE. 

Methanol and Fischer-Tropsch hydrocarbons from coal and biomass will provide high energy density fuels for the carbon-neutral future as petroleum scarcity drives other technologies into play. The Fischer-Tropsch liquified fuels technology from 20th century pariah states (Nazi Germany and South Africa) will assume a greater role in the post-petroleum age.

Fermentation of starch-derived glucose to ethanol and CO2 is too wasteful in the end to be attactive.  Fermentation of cellulosic material to acetate is more mass efficient. Esterification and reduction of ethyl acetate affords ethanol. One company, ZeaChem, (former coworkers, actually) is already working to bring this technology on stream. It remains to be seen how it will go over. I wish them well.

Electric power for the future will come from many sources. Distant, centralized power plants will channel energy across the grid to home-charged automobiles. Electrons travel fast and quietly over the lonely wire. They do not require fleets of ponderous 18-wheelers to move them around in limited quantities.

I see a future heavily reliant on electrons supplied from nuclear plants. Uranium-235 infrastructure will continue to supply fuel to nuclear plants for a long time. But the low abundance of U-235 (o.7 %) and the ever present proliferation potential of Pu-239 from this fuel cycle raises questions as to the wisdom of building U-235 nuke plants in the third or fourth tier states.

A more obscure nuclear fuel that is more abundant than uranium will see a phase-in as demand on the present nuclear fuel infrastructure exceeds supply.  That fuel is Th-232. Thorium-232 is  generally more abundant that uranium and has the additional benefit that it’s major isotope, Th-232 , is the nuclide of interest. Th-232 is not a fissile nuclide, but is a “fertile” isotope instead. Th-232 absorbs a neutron in a reactor seeded with U-235 or Pu-239 to provide an initial neutron flux to become Th-233, which beta decays to Pa-233 which further beta decays to U-233.  It is U-233 which is the fissile nuclide.  U-233 then participates in the fission chain reaction that generates the heat.

You can’t make a nuclear weapon out of Th-232, though in principle you could make one from U-233. The downside of a U-233 bomb is the high specific activity of this isotope.  U-233 is intensely radioactive and poses extra problems in handling.

The economics of thorium energy is advantageous in many ways to that provided by uranium/plutonium infrastructure. Thorium is abundant in monazite formations- reportedly up to 16 % thorium oxide.  The present problem with the thorium cycle is handling the intensely radioactive U-233 that remains in the spent fuel elements. Separate processing infrastructure will have to be put in place to supply reactors that burn thorium before this fuel can go forward.

An HTGR  Brayton cycle reactor with a helium turbine could provide up to 50 % thermodynamic efficiency.  Combine this reactor design with the potential cost savings of the more abundant Th-232, and you have a technology that is well set to provide power to keep the lights, cable TV, and the internet going into the post-petroleum age.

Check out the blog dedicated to Energy from Thorium. I’m writing about thorium because I think it is an important fuel and it needs to find its way to mainstream thinking.  

Uranium Business Returning to Critical Mass

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There is a saying that opportunity doesn’t beat the door down, it only knocks quietly. So it seems to be with uranium.  The American uranium extraction business took a big hit when the Three Mile Island accident happened in the late 1970’s. Nuclear power growth was tabled and only recently has it shown signs of recovery. 

With few exceptions, the rebound of the North American nuclear fuel business is largely invisible, apparent only if you go digging for signs.  One exception is happening in north central Colorado, near the town of Nunn.  A Canadian company, Powertech Uranium Corp., has acquired mineral rights to a sizeable parcel of land northeast of Ft Collins along the eastern side of I-25. It is called the Centennial Project and circumscribes an ore body estimated to hold 5.1 to 9.6 million pounds of U3O8, according to a technical report posted in the public domain at the Powertech website. The extent of U3O8 recovery would depend on the percent cutoff level of acceptable ore. The ore body is a discontinuous series of subsurface deposits with the top of the uranium mineralization at ca 82 feet below the surface. 

According to the report by Gorski and Voss, the average grade of the ore is 0.094 % and the average thickness of the vein is 8.8 ft (Table 1, latest estimate). Powertech has mentioned the possibility of in-situ extraction with bicarbonate leach as the means of removal of the mineral value rather than underground mining.

Naturally, the locals have not warmed up to the news that there might be a uranium mining operation in the area. A local group, Coloradoans Agains Resource Destruction (CARD), has put up a website (NunnGlow) and are vigorously lobbying against the development. In particular, the matter of leaching has brought a large negative sentiment to the forefront and Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) has intervened with the NRC to allow a more lengthy public comment period in the permitting process. Locals are rightfully concerned about their aquifer and are entitled to some straight talk about the matter.

While I am generally in favor of uranium mining, I have to agree with NunnGlow in regard to contamination of the aquifer by this in-situ leaching process. Powertech needs to offer some compelling evidence that the aquifer won’t be harmed by their leaching operations.

Ranium. The only thing missing is U.

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On this magical day 50 years ago, Th’ Gaussling was born into the world.  Yes, I am a 9/11 baby and today is L-Day. Remember your Roman numerals?  Once a perfectly respectable though bland day of the year, 9/11 has become the new Pearl Harbor Day. Everybody remembers where the hell they were 9/11/01.  I turned 44 that day. 

To celebrate this day, we decided to do an unusual thing. We went uranium prospecting.  I borrowed a Geiger Counter and we headed up to the mountains near Idaho Springs.  A few weeks back in a chance encounter with a retired hard rock miner, I learned of an old mine that was allegedly dug with the hope of finding uranium. Looking like a thousand other abandoned mines, this mine has been silent for many years. [Sidebar: This fellow didn’t look like Gabby Hayes, though his chums certainly do. Hardrock mining is a tough business.]

Our miner seemed credible. When asked, he did know about pitchblende and other uranium-bearing ore deposits in the area. He said that there used to be a “big operation over that ridge over there” (pointing east). The miner was very cautious about giving too many details. Most people asked him about gold, so his curiosity about me was piqued when I starting drilling into the particulars of uranium.  Mining is a very secretive business. Gold fever is real but other metals will cause this enchantment as well.

So, we pulled along side the narrow dirt road this morning with sample bags and a GM counter.  This model is a survey meter with a thin metal (aluminum) window protecting the GM tube.  So, we could not pick up alpha’s at all and probably very few beta’s- just gamma’s for the most part.  Given the penetrating ability of gamma radiation, with it’s low ionization aptitude, a large fraction of the gamma’s sail through the tube undetected.

At our home along the Front Range of Colorado, the meter will pick up maybe 8-15 counts of background radiation per minute on average. Cosmic rays, solar radiation, and radiation sources from the rock and soil make up the background rate.

Scrambling over the mine tailings, we found sporadic upticks in the count as the detector approached the pile. Overall the detectable radiation was qualitatively 3-5 times the background rate found at home. The counter (which is calibrated) rarely indicated higher than 0.1 MR/hr.  While the mine tunnel was open, I declined to enter, prefering to work on the tailings pile.

While there is clearly radioactive material in the mine tailings, the sum total of the radioactive species seemed quite low.  Of course, I do not know what the situation is with the alpha emitters.  No individual rock was even remotely hot.  The GM tube near the ground was picking up the sum of all the emissions in the area.

It would seem that the miner was partially right about the mine. They might have been digging for uranium, but it would appear that they did not find much of it, given the lack of development and the apparent lack of significant radioactivity in the tailings. 

Tom “Nuke ’em” Tancredo (R-CO)

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Our very own representative TomTancredo (R-CO) has outlined conditions under which he would retaliate against the Muslim shrines of Mecca and Medina. A terrorist nuclear explosion in the US would be grounds for President Tancredo to authorize release of nuclear weapons against these two Holy Sites.

Now, it stands to reason that if a nuclear explosion occurs in the US, the president has to do something. According to Iowapolitics.com, Tancredo said

“If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina,” the GOP presidential candidate said. “That is the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they would otherwise do. If I am wrong fine, tell me, and I would be happy to do something else. But you had better find a deterrent or you will find an attack. There is no other way around it. There have to be negative consequences for the actions they take. That’s the most negative I can think of.”  

To Tancredo’s credit he did come up with an actual idea – on his own – that if we get nuked by terrorists, we should do something.  The problem with his solution of nuking Muslim shrines is that it would be a localized attack on a delocalized problem. Muslim antipathy towards the US is a political viewpoint; it is a philosophy that justifies their indulgence in one of mankinds most sensuous of opiate pleasures. 

That pleasure is the near universal impulse to throw oneself down prostrate and grovel before the deity.  Muslims of a certain bent (not all of them, mind you) have refined the notion of extreme groveling through the use of explosives. They enthusiastically celebrate this peculiar form of reverence with the pious formalism of martyrdom. For millions of young angry men with no viable economic future, it has an irresistable appeal.

Ascetic leaders like bin Laden are not motivated by the physical plane. Bin Laden is very much a charismatic hero figure who has cast off attachment to the material world. This is a kind of archetype. To the satisfaction of his followers, he lives in caves and walks the covetless path. Bin Laden’s goal is an Islamic Caliphate. A nuclear retalliation against any Muslim state, much less a shrine, will polarize many millions to bin Laden’s cause of Muslim hegemony for centuries to come.   

There is some need deep within the human brain to assume an inferior posture before the deity. It cuts across all societies and religions.  It is seems somehow discordant that the diety who set the spin of galaxies and the organization of DNA in motion curiously requires that humans proclaim their regret for those very attributes that make them simply human.  It is a most peculiar and, I think, biological, proclivity.

It seems to me that the optimal response to an Islamic terrorist nuclear attack on the US can only be this- No nuclear response in kind.  We absorb it and we express our regret that this heinous act was perpetrated on us.  It would be our nuclear restraint that would cause the terrorist movement to stand out before the world as the focus of savagery.

Realistically, could a US president actually do this? It seems doubtful.  The pressure on a sitting president to release a nuclear weapon in response to nuclear attack at home would be enormous.  Our restraint and the cessation of one-sided middle eastern policies would do more to undermine bin Laden and his kind than any fancy weapons system or occupation force. It would be the one weapon that they could not counter.  Consider the examples of Christ, Ghandi, and King.

The extinction of Muslim extremism must come from internal collapse. Muslims themselves must conclude that vile and murderous behaviour is unacceptable and that the religious justification for murder is a misread of their covenant with the deity.  

Extremists amplify their effect with chemical energy- they use explosives.  A small number of terrorists become Robin Hood characters and receive encouragement and recruits from their more passive background of countrymen. You can’t destroy this with airpower and mobile infantry. 

A nuclear retalliation by the US would vitrify a few sandy locations, but it would also politically unify Muslims behind the extremist cause, irrespective of the damage done to the US in the first place. We cannot win by nuclear retalliation. We only facilitate further use of nuclear force.  The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is not valid in the conflict with suicidal terrorists. MAD is a doctrine that is only valid between nation states with armies and the desire to survive.

All of this is not to say that we wouldn’t be pursuing the perpetrators.  But nuclear demolition of Mecca would be counterproductive. Terrorism is a kind of franchise operation.  How do you nuke the 50 or 5000 scattered, clandestine operatives who did the deed? It’s a bug hunt. The destruction of Mecca would only validate core suspicions about us- that we are metaphysically corrupt and maybe bin Laden was right.

A state can’t successfully wage a military shooting war against an idea promulgated by clandestine operators with little to lose. But police investigation over 20 years in concert with intelligent and fair international policies could render the bin Laden characters obsolete.